


Like the inside of an empty packet

by Fluffinson (orphan_account)



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Bulimia mention - sort of, Gen, Helge doesn't die in this, Helge whump, Implied Noah death, Noah is utterly insensitive, There is no way back, Using food to cope, but does he actually?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-04 00:46:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13352952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Fluffinson
Summary: Noah doesn't approve of Helge's dependence on Raider bars.This sounds like fluff but it isn't. Be forewarned. It's soul rotting angst.





	Like the inside of an empty packet

 

 

 

The bright shine on the inside of the wrapper is like a very small present. It gleams. Otherworldly.

Noah is sure that's what Helge is thinking.

The man takes to pulling them out and unwrapping them at the most inopportune moments. Always before and always After.

Noah never says anything, it's a small way to cope, but it's incontestable that Helge reads the judgement in his gaze and his enthusiasm is immediately cowed. He's taken to eating them just out of Noah's sight.

Always, he's losing the wrappers as if he's meaning to get them caught. Raider Bars aren't in production in 2019, neither 1953. Noah doesn't believe the man is capable of such cunning. Helge is so weak against him. Has always been so weak.

If things were not so meticulously laid out and all flaws and blunders accounted for - if Helge were not absolutely necessary by word of law - Noah would never entertain Helge as an accomplice. But he's forced.

He does what's necessary to keep Helge on track. A hand to the shoulder here and a pat to the back there.

The screwdriver instance is in the book. Since Noah had met 1986 Helge he'd had trouble envisioning it. It's an amusement. When it happens - even while it begins to happen - Noah thinks it actually won't. It does though, and the veil of contentment that falls over him covers his amusement at it. Helge trembles uselessly, draws back like he's the one being threatened. The desperation is so all encompassing it very nearly disgusts him.

It wouldn't matter. He could laugh at Helge and it wouldn't matter. Helge is unable to turn back, if he ever could.

They met in church.

Helge had turned up one Sunday - so lost - as Noah had known he would. Less than being preyed upon Helge was like a rabbit that presented its neck to the fox.

The pathetic man and his pathetic little life - begging for anything at all to disrupt it.

After the screwdriver incident Noah finds Raider bar wrapper upon Raider Bar wrapper stuffed into the cubby of the car that they pick Bartosz up in.

Noah, by his own admission, is something thoroughly designed. An idea carried through into a work of art. He's trim. He's muscular and every expression is carefully curated. He can't afford to be less. Everything depends upon it.

Helge is soft around the middle, with weak musculature. He hunches, he's unattractive and needy. An unwanted child who has grown into an unwanted man.

Of all the deceptions that try Noah, Helge is the most trying of all. It's taxing to be around the man, to have to constantly reassure him, to have to watch while he eats his damn Raider Bars. Irritation is not something Noah has felt for a long while but Helge inspires it.

Helge eats and eats his chocolate bars.

Noah finds him throwing up one day behind the cabin, twenty or thirty wrappers all around. He wants to roll his eyes but instead he shakes his head minutely - didn't mean to. He'd been meaning to pretend he doesn't see.

This moment isn't in the book.

Probably because it isn't important.

Noah has never wondered what the single torn page from the back of the book might have said. Because by then the story was already long over.

It's as he's writing it later, in his own blood - about to die, that he knows.

_I regret._

Specifically,

_I regret Helge._

Claudia will rip the page out of the book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
